the harp(y) was a big winged lyre | event + test drive meme

[groundrules]

Hello, hello! Fresh out of the box is the action spanning 14-31 July, also serving as our second test drive meme (TDM). The event is broken in three parts: one exclusive to TDM participants, one that's for the existing crew, and a communal section, as... sparks literally fly, when characters cross paths.

OOC planning & questions are HERE. Existing players can use this log to party, or you can alternatively make your own logs & network posts. Our TDMers are stuck in this playground only, but — to replicate the game experience more faithfully, they can ask questions and briefly interact with NPCS HERE.

Tiny reminder: eastbound is an invite-only game for size control, but if you found yourself here, love the setting or the playerbase but don't know anyone — PM @ groundrules, we'll figure something out. You're welcome to make a note in your top-level comment title, if you're a TDMing newb, shiny and chrome!

TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON TIMELINE | NOTES

TDM TOURISTS

A great day to be alive, chipping manicures and clawing out of a salt mine just in time for a befuddled undead cavalry to whisk their visitors away, one by one as they're recovered.

TDM characters receive quartz stones that function as translation and (network) communication devices, before they are presented to Haltham.

Cursing his luck, Haltham informs newcomers they are in the frozen citadel of Sa-Hareth, controlled by undead warlord Anurr. Characters were wrenched free from the mines of deposed death king Unhalad and... two weeks behind the eastbound caravan that is the Merchant's troupe — their one ticket home.

IS THERE AN ACCOMPLICE IN THE HOUSE?

As Haltham brokers their getaway, newcomers are foisted on Caspar and the Lucky Hands, a gang of thieves set to hijack a port delivery of silvered powder. The Hands handle the theft on D-day, but pairs of newcomers are each saddled with a stolen pouch to transport furtively across Sa-Hareth.

They must escape frequent sentinel searches and other petty thieves to rendez-vous within a day at the dark, dusty and overpriced Hog & Mead tavern in the Merchants' Arena.

Anyone caught by local enforcement can spend a few hours imprisoned in a converted fishermen's warehouse, guarded by three underpaid officers, before breaking or talking themselves out. Thank your predecessors, who ruined the only decent jailhouse.

ALL ABOARD

The travel hell punishment fits the larceny crime: after rendez-vous, Caspar, Haltham, two undead and the TDM tourists join some noble passengers, who seek refuge in Taravast after vocally supporting Unhalad.

They board a seven-wagon streetcar pulled by twelve mechanical horses, heading out of Sa-Hareth down the haunted Stairs of Sighs passageway.

To keep the peace, newcomers must pretend to also be disgruntled Unhalad supporters — and to know nothing about the many bags of exotic opiates that Caspar has dragged aboard.

As they advance down the Stairs canyon, characters may observe each night brings a full moon and blood rains that disappear without trace, come morning. They can also hear the melancholic, indecipherable song of a woman — and find themselves dreaming nightly of burning alive, or being buried under hot tar. They will wake alert and increasingly distrustful of their companions.

At one point, the express train horsecar will pass by a galloping arctic bear, which will stop to salute. Do not feed it.

Characters receive a red helleborus brand on their left wrist to identify each other. It disappears within a week's time.

Test drive questions HERE.

» THE NEXT STOP

EXISTING PARTY

THE WAR IN WORDS

The recent emergence of the dark tar-like creatures gradually unsettles Lord Arha and his ghostly armies into violent outbursts. Throughout the day, the legions become progressively corporeal, no longer flickering out of existence and retaining their memories. They remain dead.

The following morning, the harpies throw down their usual homages of splintered aged bone, now alongside withered parchment. The strips feature excerpts from the letters of Arha and the Lady Hatisse — which Mazyar and his people can translate.

After reading one such parchment, a soured Arha takes unasked command of Mazyar's caravan, imposing benevolent but firmly enforced curfews. Grim-faced ghost soldiers start to keep watch of characters at all times. Some will accuse caravan travellers of being witches or spies of Taravast's Attaryl school.

Those crafty enough to pick up Arha's discarded letter can see his hands have smeared it bloodied. Translated, the missive encourages Arha to turn back with his armies from Taravast.

DON'T HARP ON ABOUT IT

All hell breaks loose as Allison, Lily, Wei Wuxian and Five follow tar harpies inside their makeshift "nest" — going down a steep pit into one of the canyon mountains, and reaching the cavernous and shifting corridors of a stone temple. The passageways lead to small chambers that host stone tombs, many opened and still holding the remains of bones and drips of tar.

Angered by the intrusion, the laired harpies turn aggressive and exit into the canyon, starting an attack spree. They throw rocks, claw or fly down and pick up stray animals and humans. Arha and his army can help you defend against the creatures.

With their main entryway compromised, some harpies will leave the lair through the fissured canyon wall, creating a crude and claustrophobic opening. The sorcery contained within the temple will seep out, with magically sensitive characters finding they can no longer quite tell the difference between the living and the dead. (All) characters can now sometimes briefly see the flickered figures of people they deeply miss around them.

Existing character questions HERE.

» AND THEN YOU GET VISITORS.

OLD TIMERS & TDM TROOPS

FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BU—

Gone rogue, some harpies will target a rapidly incoming seven-wagon streetcar, destroying or flying away with eight of its 12 mechanical horses, and the sad coachmen. The remaining steeds are completely unmanned.

The existing crew can wave their handkerchiefs as the train horsecar speeds by the caravan, set to crash into a canyon wall — or lend a hand to evacuate our TDMers, more Sa-Hareth refugees, and... our good friend Haltham and two of his creatures. Also, opium.

TDMers can meanwhile (haphazardly) board off or try to take control of the mechanical horses.

Write your starters as you will, or plan out the fate of the train horsecar HERE.

FRIENDS & FAMILY PROGRAMME

Following their unlikely survival, newcomers can join the existing party as part of smuggler merchant Mazyar's prosperous caravan. They will receive food, decent clothes and a donkey, horse or elk mount — a rare upside from the ongoing blood rain weather forecast, and the tar-drenched harpies that throw down aged bone.

They will also notice that Mazyar's caravan has been escorted by a ghost army led by the Lord Arha. He travels to free his lover, the oracle Hatisse from her alleged imprisonment by the witches of Taravast. All characters will experience a blood-curdling dread whenever they think to tell Arha or his men that they are dead — but speaking the words is now possible. Report HERE, if you'd like to break the bad news.

As the caravan stops for a few days, the existing party and newcomers can make merry, recover or raid the open haunted temple — where they may find several untouched stone tombs, including one engraved with a sculpture of Lord Arha. It will prove highly difficult to remove that lid without a group effort... but for that, or any other tomb questions, GO HERE.

NOTES

FRESH MEAT GONNA EAT

TDM events count as game canon, if you app in.

You can do network-style posts & log starters. Invent a username for communicators — but you're stuck with it after!

You can use the two allied NPC undead during the train horsecar disaster portion. Deploy them as you see fit to keep your character alive. The undead come with higher strength, speed, hunting instincts and a... disturbingly cold presence.

Haltham can make last-stand miracles happen for you, but at a heavy price. Inquire here.

OLD TIMERS, THINE WRINKLES SWEET

Existing characters won't be able to tell whether the newcomers or each other are living, dead, memories or ghosts, as a result of the (temporary) temple magic.

...yes, any leftover opiates are up for grabs. Hooligans.

You're welcome to respond to network posts from TDMers — but please keep your network posts in eastbound, think of Ye Olde AC.

Comments

[downswing]

"I am attending," he corrects, in the way of disciples and chamber servants, of handmaids learning the trickery of the mistress' hair, dark silk in filigree. Water drop-drips-drowns Wei Ying's cheeks, film and sheen of sweat and rising warmth diffusing the horizon. Easy prey for a matchmaker, this Yiling Patriarch, when he does not hiss and claw.

A palm's width between them, but Wei Ying looks viscera of oil and ink stains, a sketched confusion of timid lines. Tired, where flesh absent the reining of a golden core stays lax and thinned — worn. Human, for the weedy tumble of his hair, rounding, sinking the red of his ribbon.

Owlishly, Lan Wangji watches, considers — remembers enough of war strategy to collect the bowl of barely thickened plant ash beside him, thick clump between his fingertips — then, politely sits the bridge of his palm on Wei Ying's nape, dunking him head-first in the barrel's pool.

At the last moment, his grip eases, dragging Wei Ying up by the neck as if he were a feline and a miscreant, barely his hair dunked, skin spared the pink chips of scalding — while slush of soot spans and stretches in viscous webs between Lan Wangji's fingertips. He spreads it at the sight-glanced halfway of Wei Ying's tresses, catching the hair curtain between his palms, and scrubbing vigorously in lines horizontal, in what some might be tempted to liken to —

"Tell me of the spirits."

— laundering Wei Ying's hair, as he has seen the women of the convoy perform with gusto each morning, by the well and pond-side.

[weifinder]

Attending now, where before, ah, wasn't it unearned? Cue the raising of his brows, but for the moment, ribbon pulled free to rest clutched and bound in his hand, when Lan Zhan's hand finds the nape of his neck, and his own head is plunged, unceremoniously, into the hot water.

It's shock enough that his reaction is only to flail arms as Lan Zhan likewise drags him back up, his hair bearing all the heat, but in such a way as to end up cascading down his face and neck and he's clinging, with both hands, to whatever he can grasp of Lan Zhan's, turning his way while his hair is getting scrubbed like he's personally offended the man for the concept of having hair.

"Lan Zhan! Hahaha, ah, what, what are you doing?!"

If this is washing his hair, free him immediately. Has he earned this torture? Has he made Lan Zhan angry? Probably? Possibly? Is this his due justice? Surely he can't have earned dunking and scrubbing with what smells like wet ash.

[downswing]

Off beside him, Wei Ying is crowing, clawing, tugging, teasing himself free — as if he were a spirit, slender and fractured and barely borrowing shape in the winks of bright lamp light, the moon's luminescence glimpsed through light patches, where the tent skins stretch thin.

What... is Lan Wangji doing? He startles, grip briefly hesitant. "Cleansing."

...is it not plain? Ah. No. Injected into war so soon after his tutelage, exiled into Yiling and excused a gentleman's retinue after — Wei Ying never enjoyed the privileges of assistance. Perhaps he is only overwhelmed now, the discipline of Lan Wangji's diligent fingers wrinkling the sheets of his hair, calling out filth.

He remembers, midway, to still Wei Ying's head with one hand on his nape, and elevate a fresh palm's cup of water onto his forehead, suds and heat trickling down in rivulets. What dragging insignificance, what waste of seconds and speed. Easier — and he takes the long measure of Wei Ying — if Lan Wangji were to dunk him again. A compromise: he catches Wei Ying's eye, nods once, signals the barrel's gaping mouth below. Easier, if you sink your head yourself.

"Wei Ying. The spirits."

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian actively pushes back against Lan Zhan's hand, wondering what form of cleansing this is, if it's an extension of a jest, but no, no, there's sincerity in how he startled, there is honesty in what he says.

Wei Wuxian, confronted with a stark highlight of a gap in Lan Zhan's innumerable skills, one that should not surprise, but still is, after that hair and the oils and the comb that had been too much a month prior.

"Lan Zhan," he says, starting one thought, one that he diverts from near immediately, realising the heft of his words may fall poorly across Lan Zhan's shoulders. Let me do it, he swallows back, asking in awkward stilt, "Have you ever washed someone's hair before?"

Bracing one hand against the barrel, his neck against Lan Zhan's hand, the suds and water staining his face in warm smears that drip off his chin, thickened. Thicker, perhaps, than his face? No, not quite.

The spirits, there's that question, but the spirits spare him not now.

"I'll answer on the spirits but, ah, a moment? Please?"

look at this face

[downswing]

There... is a disturbance in the force of Lan Wangji's proceedings, advance muted in the far-too-literal face of Wei Ying's stricken opposition. His fingers peel free of Wei Ying's hair, crowded under spill of suds and ash, grasping at the stick of the paste, caught on bones' end.

He knows, when Wei Ying looks askance: he has miscalculated, though the specifics of the night's intrusion elude him. Modesty's a fortress dire and defended — they bear their silks firm, a simple pour of waters wept over Wei Ying's shoulders. Cleansing is urgent, imperative. Outside, the moon grins down a toothless crone, but the lamps still sweeten the tent with light's diversion. The hour keeps. Why stall, then...? ( A moment. )

"Have it." Shifting, he breaks his vigil at the barrel's side, sinking to one knee, then its brother again, hands knotting obediently on his lap while he seeks out the look of Wei Ying, vibrating expectation to resume his duties. "Have I ill stepped?"

bae if kneeling gets you going--

[weifinder]

Has he? Lan Zhan goes to his knees, sits in repose, attentive, and Wei Wuxian is temporarily tongue tied into his own knotted problem: ill stepped? Yes, or no, or perhaps it is less the stepping is ill and the technique is lacking. This is such a disconnect he has to blink, and then he crouches, reaching for those knotted hands with his own, likewise damp speckled ones. Thin ash strews weak lines down his face, and he breathes. He breathes.

"Lan Zhan, I fear for learning how you wash your own hair." Or how in full Lan Zhan treats bathing, but perhaps the chill is not his only punishment. "Here," he says instead, "Will you let me borrow your hands?"

He wants: to tug upward, to the barrel's side, and he's not darting back out into the night, damp and ready for the rains of blood that wash more gently than Lan Zhan's scrubbing does. No, here is a domestic challenge, and ash soap or not, hot barrel or not, he can at least feel less like an animal miscreant if he can coax Lan Zhan into some approximation of hand-awareness.

That is, if he secures his rising, his hands, his attendance, offered as it is now. If he can keep him close, not reaching over, but side to side so that Wei Wuxian in awkward motion to bend his own head down without the pressure of a nape-tucked palm can draw Lan Zhan's arms down, too, in a dance step of a fighter's shift to grapple from behind, when downed a sword.

Hair in its mussed length floating, then sinking, into hot waters, and Wei Wuxian letting his scalp burn in that half-pleasant way once he curls his neck just so, tucking his chin in and looking sideways toward what he can see of Lan Zhan. Clawed hands, joined and cupped, like the times when teaching the young disciples how first to string and draw a bow.

"It helps to work the water through first," he says, and that's his hand-on implication, to coax the rigor mortus of Lan Zhan's fingers toward the ink-soaked tresses slowly sinking into the steaming water, waterlogged and waterbound, have I ill stepped is a companion to not ill stepped, but ill informed, and short, as with words, but lessened in effect.

[downswing]

Take them, and his hands float and rise and go, venomous snakes seeking fresh shelter in the nest of Wei Ying's hair, coiled, clutched, grasping.

There is a pleasure in the give, a rapt, mute exhilaration: Wei Ying bends, and Lan Wangji's touch follows, remembering the first heaving breath of the rabbits, trembled in his hand. How their spines curled, their limbs retreated, twitched like flickers of sunlight between braiding grass blades. How the furred sheen of their muscled side gave way to soft, marine trembles. Breathe alongside them, and keep his caress gentled, breathe and let the universe swell and deflate beside him, let its life pulse.

The water, first. Mouth half-gasped, he collects fresh load, and he knows the trick of things now, of lifting it sweetly and letting it sink, of watching the long trailed drop of it mingled with Wei Ying's hair. He scrunches Wei Ying's tresses first, kinder than an honest scrub might call for — combs fingers through the woven length, then eases them down. Once. Again. The paste, following, until he more strokes the hair than applies himself to it, but pulls back, half-knelt, to explore his handiwork.

"Acceptable?" Never mind the wave of suds lingered on each side of Wei Ying's scalp, the rain of it down, the excruciating knots of worked hair.

[weifinder]

He could help it, but he hasn't had anyone's fingers stroking through his hair in years, and it coaxes him still where he'd have still squirmed, trying to continue eyecontact. Instead he stares at his own chest, Lan Zhan finger combing through his hair, not smoothly, squeezing and collecting and at some point, with the paste, painting Wei Wuxian's locks like there's some secret there to cover over, hairs going white or grey or anything lighter before their time.

It isn't graceful, too new, and he's fairly sure if he thumped a foot he'd either earn Lan Zhan's startlement or a fleeting hint of a smile.

"Better," he says, through a thickened throat, closing his eyes, ostensibly against the paste and water and heat, twice sourced. "Always better." Suds or whatever else pattering down, at least it's not blood, and at least it's not tears, or something else equally embarrassing.

His eyes stay closed, and he holds onto the barrel's edge, white knuckled.

[downswing]

There, a deed well done, Wei Ying... if not thawed under Lan Wangji's hand, then at least nobly curbing the instinct for immediate, brutal resistance. The greasy sheen of his hair commands later attention — Wangji scalds his fingers in the barrel's pools, and resumes their slow, measured passage over each lock, separating them, pushing the hair aside and curling, then uncurling it in a soft palm.

Water licks the tresses, dissolves their weight. He feels Wei Ying's resignation mere heartbeats before his grip locks on the barrel, his eyes clench close. In battle, this would be first blood. Here, Wangji only excavates more water, releasing it near Wei Ying's nape, so it may glide down the gentle swell of his head.

"Wei Ying." Cease... smugly co-existing with these ministrations. Focus. "The spirits. What now?"

Of their plans. Of Wei Ying's, constantly a morbid question, a threat that the foremost disciple of Yunmeng Jiang and the thinly laughing prodigy who rejoined the cultivation world sixteen years later might remove themselves, so the Yiling Patriarch can play out his part. They cannot gift him command of a stolen, roaming army. This is not his manner, his place.

[weifinder]

He keeps his hold, and his closed eyes, seeing death dancing behind them, but in the softer sense, the one not greedy for the hollow in his chest or the blood that beats so strongly in his veins.

"Patience. Settle the ones who are looking for it," he says, because not every loyalty need be through endless marches. Some peace is earned and deserved by the tired and ready to leave, and he sighs inwardly, thinking on it. "Lan Zhan, what does Hatisse want, what does Arha? At the end of the march, when there's collateral damage for the living as he comes closer to realising what he doesn't face?"

Or what she doesn't. A betrayal, betrayals, regrets, manipulations, but whose, and to what ends?

[downswing]

"Wei Ying." Oh, Wei Ying, willing and soft-boned sacrifice, collapsed on the barrel's edge to await the fruition of Lan Wangji's grip again, his fingers numb and teasing. Of the game, chin high and waters downpouring, when Wangji releases a new cup's fill, as if hurt might be a distant, but coalescing possibility — as if he braces against another trial, and the judge who delivers it, steel-eyed and vulture-like.

He plays too often at coercion. As if to accept a kindness freely given is to wish it undone, in his greed.

"You overthink," Lan Wangji whispers and brokers more water between cupped hands, floods the top of Wei Ying's hair, dark, and his tresses long, and cascades his fingers to comb the very ends. The scalp is where the rabbits enjoy their affection, and Wei Ying betrays his animal manners, the truth of his easy yielding, how his neck bends and the curve juts out bone, how his eyes slip, teasing closed.

Sixteen years come, sixteen passed, he is left at once adrift and in whirlwind, reconciling old and new and the supressed negotiation of Lan Wangji's learned kindness. No matter. At least now Wangji can scrub. "Appease or subdue them. What is your instinct?"

[weifinder]

The coaxing of him toward answers and surrender, though he only half recognises it, when it's not a inexorable press toward some given ending, a flirtation with better things before turning around and accepting the explanation that makes the worst easier to forget. The water tickles, the warmth like needlepricks in a way easy to welcome, awareness across his scalp and the weight of his hair made ever more pronounced now. Family, in a sense, history in another; filial piety in the weight they carry from birth into adulthood into anything beyond.

Appease or subdue. Is that only a question of instinct for the spirits of the dead, or does it come up, bubbles fragile on the surface of it all, between the living?

He breathes in, sighs out with the water. "Appease," he says, "Appease first." Even back then, it was what he preferred. Unorthodox to allow an appeasement that took another life, and no, it was not kindness to allow the dead revenge, but it was, and it was slippery, because revenge is something justice can demand but has limits where it stops being revenge, and starts being only destruction. There has to be reason; there has to be control.

His fingers curl in a touch, over the grain of the wood, the edge of the barrel blunt teeth cutting into his hands in a reassuring, grounding way.

"Subdue if it comes down to conflict." His tools in that arena are ones geared for it, and toward it; he breathes in, and out again, long and slow.

[downswing]

Appease, first. Subdue, thereafter. A natural progression, planets falling once more in tender love with their orbits. A lifetime ago, they thinned their sleeve silks at the elbows to ink down their lessons and memorise the same tenets of Cloud Recesses: exorcism requires soothing as the first step, elimination accepted only as a last resort. And manipulation was ever the long shadow that stabbed Uncle's brow, that thickened like rope crossing Wei Ying's neck, the waiting noose.

Small teeth and busy claws: their attributes, dissected, leave spirits without defences. Easy prey for greedy taking, and the Patriarch's hands broken, but his reach deep. Could break a babe from a maid's belly with one whisper, the monster might, for all Wei Ying never claimed any prize of the womb's waters. And here?

Here, he thaws like an ancient cat, bones suple and limbs long, finding his comfort under licks of summer sun. The heat suits him, ripens his cheeks warm, steals the last whisper of his enthusiasm. Mellowed, he could be anyone, and yet he is this — placid under Lan Wangji's rinse, for once his war waged and won and depleted.

"They were soulmates, once," he entrusts, heavy gravel on his tongue. And this, the ache of it.

[weifinder]

There are reasons these days he might stir toward guidance, not only calming. Reasons here perhaps, but less so, a series of stacked consequences not leading any to righteousness, leading all to needing justice, the injustice something brought in by another party.

Water flows, but this is not a well; it is not water of a river, and even so, the twain shall never meet. Yet all are water, and water cleanses, and water dirties, and water leaves, or soaks, or now, works its way into his scalp and hair with ashy aftertaste.

They were soulmates, once. A tremble, and his head dips lower with the sigh that spills from his lips, lungs a yawn for fresh air.

"Still are," he says, "For all the things that were not clearly said between them. Soulmates are as human as anyone else. We make mistakes." No pause, but the thawing of the joints in his hand, the white fading as blood returns to knuckles, digit by digit, a progression of the living, of warmth. "I'm sorry," he says, and he turns his head, one dark eye aiming toward Lan Zhan's face, drinking him in, sixteen years of silence and searching and the two men who had never stopped looking, and who had both earned reputations along the way. One for cruelty, but righteous ones; the other for chaos, and the cutting through of its heart to order.

Both lived. In their place, he wonders what he might have done, to protect whatever remained. He'll never know, and that may be the kindness masked in all the heartache surrounding it, may be the saving grace of mourning sixteen years later than everyone else had started. His pulse is a fickle, frantic rabbit stilled to calm under ministrations leaving him quivering, unraveling even as it prickles under his skin.

He calms himself to stillness, looking, watching.

"Neither one of them willing to let go, but the knowing. If we think we understand and yet hold secrets, if there's no honest conversation, what boundaries are stepped beyond, irrevocably?" The apology, the awareness. No core, golden or otherwise, only a hallowed hollow, only the sacred bones and the sinews stretched taunt between them, the soul that sings and cries and sleeps in all of us, and the hands that outstretch, covered in blood, covered in tears, waiting, hoping to be held in turn.

[downswing]

We make mistakes, and he speaks it with that sluggish peach core of a mouth, Wei Ying's, rot-drenched once, dark and dirt and red-rimmed where only water sheds now in flickered downpour. We make mistakes, and they named burial grounds for Wei Ying's once, carried out ritual entombment, absent body, absent faith.

No paints, no powders, no matter how thick, could patch back the ruptured porcelain of Wei Ying's cheek, could stitch and sow the filigree of dark hate, pouring, where the cultivation world spat in his face. Alone, on a rooftop, their disdain trickling. It should have rained a hundred days after, to excoriate their sins.

Still are. Alone, Lan Wangji cannot chase his equal's gaze, shivered past the measure of acceptable composure, body charcoal, silhouette broken. Doubled, and withered, and gone. He aches and withdraws. "Bathe..." His mouth too dry in world of arid thought. "Bathe the rest."

Absent a modesty screen, a meek surrender: he only crawls away steps' span of distance to kneel once more, a watchful disciple with his hands neatly folded on his cap-planks. His back strong and steadfast, a barrier to allow the petty sanctity of Wei Ying's unwatched ablutions.

"We will appease them. Let them remain soulmates in rest." Sting of the tongue, singeing. "They knew one another. Bonds keep."

[weifinder]

Water is sound and movement, the sloshings and drippings as Wei Wuxian closes his eyes, lips quirking into a grin that looks a frown, hanging his head like this. Both hands release their holds, and he dunks his head into the water, scores his own nails against scalp and through hair that pulls in protest, but to not avail. He will make it submit, ignore its posturings, rinse oil and ash and the resentment and unrest and anger of the dead from him, and splash his face after. Wring his hair out like a rag, the pour of it raucous, not a tiding of years that clatters into the barrel's grasp, but a tidal wave of them, and the silences and darknesses that never filled with light.

Still are, and he breathes, and Lan Zhan breathes, and a sundered pair does not, but still believes they might, if only they try hard enough.

Damp hair dripping, water turning cold with the chill of the air and making its way down his collar, down his back, wetting his shoulders and chest, his own miniature cascade, he approaches Lan Zhan. Kneels to settle next to him, to give answer, to offer if not truce, than a poor man's hope at understanding.

"Bonds keep," he says, because he agrees, and because he's felt it, felt the cut of it, in their bond, in his shijie's, in his shidi's. In mourning A-Yuan at every living step, at the loss of the Wens, the loss of his sister's happiness, the loss of a world that knew tolerance instead of gain and blame games, casting arrows into convenient pots and decrying their own mastery of the bow.

"So it shall be." Let the soulmates rest, unsundered. Let them be appeased. Let them, "Find Hatisse."

Some reunitings were not meant for happy turns and righteous battles. Some are steeped in pain and heartbreak and betrayal, but whose? To what degree? Go to a school of those who influence minds, and to what degree? (Is this the mess they march toward, he wonders. To politics, and agendas, and gains, and his tolerance for all of them negligible at best, depending on the treatment of the people who looked to their leaders for protection, who looked to them as provisioners of justice, and who could be found wanting.)

"Together?" His back curving, shoulders dipping, hair plastered to skull and back and shoulders, droplets dripping down his face, collar soaked with an honest work's sweat gifted in unlikely turn. A loosened figure of bones and sinews and tendons that arrayed themselves with strength, to turn to sallow softness and back again. Dark and honest eyes that drank in Lan Zhan's face, that parched themselves on that burning expanse, because Hanguang-jun forever suits him, at each up and down.

[downswing]

The screeching parts and unoiled turns of him, the mechanical, scratched fittings of his body — Wei Ying, negotiating the steel of his spine bent, the rags of his hair, the riches of his touch, married into an union of ablutions. The ancestors would bless, but only loud violence seals the conjugal transgression of Wei Ying, clatter of limbs, splashes of suds and warmed water.

If Lan Wangji has learned little else in sixteen years, it has been this: the long, poured, trickling wait, the drop and drop adding to stream, a collection of incandescent moments. How to breathe in a world inhabited by tumults, by boomed voices and thundered intent. Wei Ying takes center stage now because, rubble decimated when he approaches, he never knew the lesser rows of waiting tables exist.

Alone, they sit like stone and ghosts, and Lan Wangji drawls out the moment — lets Wei Ying steep warm-hued like wulong in the glass gaiwan. Unbidden, Wangji reaches to hover his hand above Wei Ying's nearest, close enough to enjoy the wafting heat of another's wet-touched body, but retaining the final distance. Together.

"You bathe as dogs do." The final insult, honey-sweetened with the uprising corners of a traitor's smile, the line golden and peeling. He should yet congratulate: how often is Wei Ying stirred to grand gestures of grooming? Hands red-clean, much has been won today.

[weifinder]

He starts into laughter, the spill of it no tinkling of bells in some artful clattering array, but a light and leaping thing, loud enough to cut outside the taunt walls of their tent and turn heads that as easily turn away again.

"Lan Zhan! Don't scare me like that! Bathing like dogs, as if dogs bathe."

Dogs might be bathed, but as far as he knows or is concerned, dogs embrace filth and violence. He pulls an outright pout, managing to look insulted surface deep, but his eyes laugh, thinking this is fun at his expense in a way with no stakes. Nothing lurks with teeth that aren't blunted to vegetarian diets or honed to simpler blood needs; Jiang Cheng and his four legged beast of a dog are in their own tent, and Wei Wuxian is safe that company, for now.

Together, with that hovered hand and the heat trapped between them. Together, and oh, but is there work yet to do.

Work for the morrow, winding around the roots of problems that can be seen under daylight's starkness or in the flickers of the firelights around them, in this blood drenched encampment.

"Lan Zhan," he says, quirking his brow. "What should be do with all this water?"

[downswing]

A waste of waters, lugged sluggishly across camp side like glistened war spoils, past the rust-bathing of earnest bloodshed. He stirs, startled out of stupor, staring first at the extension of bone and skin, his alien hand, where it threatens sharp descent upon Wei Ying's — then at the span of tender white, Wei Ying's fingers, the cunning invitation of touch of years ago, when, students, they marauded a sect's stretch as if it were the emptied house of their sophomoric grievance.

Is this Wei Ying's due, the lack of blemish, the tender web of veins and fragility unbruised — or is it Mo Xuanyu, lacking worn-in strain, bereft of calluses? Is there an invisible threshold where the spirit old met the body new and twain met into crystalline union? Is this Mo Xuanyu's kindness that rewards Lan Wangji with patience, where Wei Ying's feelings, undulled, spelled themselves as screams of accusation before his earthly fall?

He does not ask. Stifles the humid, clandestine gasp, the selfishness of worry. Raises himself, one leg, then the next, and folds the pieces of his excuses, "Cleanse yourself fully in privacy."

And he slithers out, so that Wei Ying might enjoy the rest of his evening.